UTSA getting $50 million boost

By Tracy Idell Hamilton and Melissa Ludwig - Express-News

Published 12:00 am, Friday, June 4, 2010

CPS Energy will commit up to $50 million over 10 years to an alliance with the University of Texas at San Antonio for sustainable energy research, a boost that backers say could catapult San Antonio into national prominence.

“This is a game-changer,” Mayor Julián Castro, who pushed for the partnership, said Thursday. “The ratepayer gets a more efficient utility, we get the economic development value of robust research and development in San Antonio and the university spirals ever more quickly to Tier One status.”

“This may be the biggest, most exciting thing that has happened at UTSA in our history,” he said. “We credit the mayor with having looked at different possibilities and saying, ‘This is where a partnership is possible.'”

The $50 million is by far the largest commitment of outside money UTSA has received and will help it compete to become a nationally recognized research university.

The second-largest total was $2.5 million from Valero Energy Foundation, a gift that was doubled under the state's Tier One program.

The institute's initial research will focus on problems with immediate application for CPS.

For example, since half the city-owned utility's energy is generated from coal and natural gas, capturing and reusing carbon emissions will be a research focus. Another is storage of wind and solar energy for later use. And with electric cars coming on the market, it will study how the power grid could support personal transportation.

“We can serve as a catalyst to really drive this innovation, to utilize CPS as a test to look at commercial-scale deployment of technology and understand the economics behind it, the consumer behavior,” Shephard said.

He will work with Cris Eugster, CPS' chief sustainability officer, to define specific research projects and agree on benchmarks UTSA would meet each year.

To gather the expertise needed to tackle those challenges, Shephard said he and his team will start hiring top-notch talent from around the world.

Funding for the first year is set at $1 million and already is included in CPS' budget, utility acting General Manager Jelynne LeBlanc-Burley said. Next year, that amount will rise to $2.5 million.

Funding for later years will be contingent on board approval and budget considerations. It also will depend on annual evaluations of the program, she said.

The planned rate increases CPS will seek in the coming years will include money for the partnership.

“I hope the ratepayer looks at this as a sound investment of their dollars,” she said, “that will help CPS aggressively move forward in its goal to provide competitively priced energy with more sustainable and renewable options.”

CPS has done some research and development on its own, LeBlanc-Burley said. By shifting a portion of that to Texas SERI, the money can be leveraged to seek additional funding from federal and state agencies and the private sector.

If the institute develops a breakthrough technology, CPS could implement it right away, said Mauli Agrawal, dean of engineering at UTSA.

Texas SERI, the new moniker for what had been called ICARE, or the Institute for Conventional, Alternative and Renewable Energy, will be housed in the engineering department.

UTSA and CPS could commercialize the technology and create spinoff companies that attract jobs and brainpower to San Antonio.

“I would compare it to the microelectronics revolution in Austin in the 1980s,” Agrawal said. “The same thing will happen here but in the area of energy.”

Positioning San Antonio to become a leader in the emerging new energy economy is one of Castro's most cherished goals.

Toward that end, he has worked to implement Mission Verde, a set of green initiatives conceived by former Mayor Phil Hardberger's administration, and has pushed CPS to expand its renewable and energy efficiency goals.

Creating this “brainpower community,” as he called it, “offers fantastic economic development potential to help San Antonio become a very competitive city in a green economy.”

Castro is not alone in his ambitions for the partnership.

“Quite frankly,” said Shephard, “I am hoping to have a national and global impact as we progress.”